Long Beach IndyCar notebook

Notes from Friday's IndyCar activities at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach.

JR Hildebrand clearly enjoys being the one long-haired hippie within the all-business Ed Carpenter Racing team. Compared to his team owner, whose hair is always short and meticulously coiffed, Hildebrand has chosen to embrace his inner rebel and let his locks grow and grow.

He's the easiest driver for fans to spot among the 22 Verizon IndyCar Series pilots in the field at his home state race, and he plans to keep it that way to for his No. 1 supporter.

"Obviously I'm from California, and I sort of don't care," the 29-year-old told RACER. "My wife's been digging on it, so who's more important than that to be appeasing with my general look? Even in the IndyCar Series, there's been some history of long-haired dudes who've had success, so I don't think I'm an outlier from that perspective. I do think we occasionally take ourselves a little too seriously, so it doesn't bother me to be disrupting that trend."

To his surprise, Carpenter has supported the unkempt look so far, and to his dismay, he recently learned Mrs. Hildebrand's appreciation for long hair isn't limited to her husband.

"Ed's told me he wants to make sure that if I last the season this way, he wants me to play Jesus for his kids around Christmas time!" he said while laughing. "I don't feel like I need to conform to anybody's ideas. For a while [Alex Tagliani] was going with the Tony Stark look for a while with his beard that was very much a Bronte Tagliani request, and I've got the same kind of program going on with my better half with Keanu Reeves.

"We just watched 'John Wick' and 'John Wick 2' the other day, and there was clearly a little glimmer in her eye during those movies ... and I'm thinking, do I have competition here? I mean, I'm an effing IndyCar driver, right?"

THANKS TODD

Former Newman/Haas Racing teammates Craig Hampson and Todd Phillips have been reunited at Dale Coyne Racing, and after their win at St. Petersburg with fellow NHR graduate Sebastien Bourdais, a great tale of Star Wars-themed celebration emerged.

"So Todd is a bit of a Star Wars geek," Hampson said of Phillips, who serves as chief mechanic on the No. 18 Honda. "Years ago, he spent his winter break building one of those huge Lego Star Destroyers. In early January he texted me a funny photo from a bar marquee that said 'LightSaber Night Has Been Cancelled – Thanks A Lot Todd!'

"I texted back asking him what he had done to cause its cancellation, but also sent a photo of my daughter's plastic Disney lightsaber – as if I had been all ready to attend LightSaber Night with him. He expressed jealousy over the fact we actually had a lightsaber in house, so I texted back promising him that if he worked hard over the winter and we managed to win a race ... I'd buy him a lightsaber."

Bourdais had barely crossed the finish line before Hampson was reminded of his promise.

"I guess he remembered the texts, because the first thing he said to me after winning the St. Pete race and clearing tech inspection was ...."You owe me a lightsaber!" So I'm a man of my word. But do you know how hard it is to get a decent lightsaber? The handle is also engraved to commemorate Seb's last to first win."

At the pace they're going this year, the veteran engineer could be buying a lot of lightsabers for his chief wrench.

"I think it's super important to recognize how valuable a chief mechanic like Todd is to having a successful program," Hampson said. "He wears a lot of hats here because our manpower and headcount is so low. He works a lot of hours – very hard. Sebastien and I are very lucky to have both him and the great group of mechanics at DCR."

NO NEWS IS GOOD NEWS

Brake cooling problems were the big topic of interest at the end of the first day of running at St. Petersburg. With new carbon fiber discs and pads supplied by Performance Friction Corporation sending huge heat spikes into the carryover brake calipers supplied by Brembo, the mismatched package became a nightmare to keep within an optimal temperature range.

New cooling allowances made by IndyCar helped teams to funnel more air to the brake package, and in the weeks since St. Pete, knowledge gained from the event – along with more tweaking and tuning conducted at road course tests – have made brake temperatures a non-issue so far in Long Beach.

"The combination of St. Pete and some test days is we understand the brakes much better," Andretti Autosport general manager Rob Edwards told RACER. "The problem was everyone had some test sets to work with before St. Pete, but nobody really had material to work with until we tested at Sebring right before the race. IndyCar has been good about letting us make changes where they're needed and I don't foresee it being much of an issue now."

Schmidt Peterson Motorsports technical director Nick Snyder echoed the sentiment of his Honda stablemate.

"We understand it better now and make a lot more changes to caliper ducting," he said. "We're trying to look after the rotor and caliper at the same time, and previously, we had plenty of [cooling] capacity, so now we're close to the limit and it's about dividing up how much goes to where to keep everything under control."

Most of the cooling problems at St. Pete hit the Honda teams harder than the Chevy camp. Although the Bowtie teams are in a better place with cooling, defending series champion Simon Pagenaud says the combo PFC/Brembo package still requires a lot of attention during the early portion of the season.

"We're good [on temperatures], but every first session to takes a while to learn the temperature we need to run, and the driving style with them is very different," he said. "It's something new and we just need to get it sorted."

HMMMMM...

A meeting between IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship team owner Wayne Taylor and the Verizon IndyCar Series is believed to have taken place on Friday at Long Beach. The Cadillac DPi-V.R entrant, whose team leads the Prototype championship after winning the season-opening Rolex 24 at Daytona and Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, was tight-lipped on the topic and declined to comment when asked by RACER.